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Necessary Myth Hypothesis
The Necessary Myth Hypothesis(NMH) is a hypothesis that relates to how ritual has had an affect on the stability on groups of societies consisting of conscious species. Although the hypothesis that has concrete evidence to assert its position on stability of societies, it's validity is still in question at this point in time. Development of the Hypothesis In 1791, Jeremy Bentham had written what are known as the Panopticon letters. These letters contained a revolutionary idea that would change the way control is implemented within a society. This idea revolves around a building called the Panopticon, which is a circular building that has "cells" with prisoners inside. In this building, the guard(s) can see the prisoners, but the prisoners cannot see the guard(s). The concept embeds a feeling into each prisoner that they are always being watched, which acts like an abstract form of surveillance. Although Bentham described uses of the concept for other uses, he did not go further into the abstract nature of the concept as Michel Foucault did in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. In Foucault's book, the Panopticon is further described as the 'internalized gaze,' which is the use of social or moral factors rather than physical violence to implement the Panoptic mentality. Though this abstract form of the Panopticon has many implications, its use is a short-sight into a deeper philosophy that exists within the concept. Foucault only scratched the surface with his book. Another paper written by Alessandri Stanziani titled "Free Labor—Forced Labor: An Uncertain Boundary?: The Circulation of Economic Ideas between Russia and Europe from the 18th to the Mid-19th Century" brings to light the blurred line between forced labor and "free-labor" when relating the Panopticon to the ways that the United States and other European nations, compared to the Soviet Union, used ideology to control the workforce of the citizens, especially for the promotion of democracy or the system of that nation. Nationalism also played a big role in this development. This analysis is made considering that during this time the Panopticon letters were written for the purpose of increasing the quality of productivity by workers within the Soviet Union without constant surveillance of these workers. The development of the Panopticon, by the analysis of Stanziani, blurs the line and establishes a new type of concept related to the Panopticon. This Panopticon can also be observed within the prosperity of the United States economy before 2008 and the stable economy of the Buddhist community, __. Although each society uses a completely different system of both economy and governance, both result in a stable and prosperous society. The deception in both examples comes from assuming that it is the system, not the concept behind each system’s development, that has lead to the prosperity. In the society implemented within the United States, the common consensus of the citizens is the ideology that wraps around the idea of democracy, a free state untouched by “tyrannies” established by such ideologies. The reward of the ideology is not of a material gain, but of an abstract gain of dominance within the system. However the Buddhist, communist society relies on the ideologies of Buddhism, the reward being of the prime goal of their religion. Though there are differences in the ideology, the similarity between the two examples is the “religious” connections. Both examples have an implementation of a religion, which is defined as “an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world-views that relate humanity to an order of existence.” Although religion is usually associated with the metaphysical, religion is, in this case, separated from the metaphysical and relates to the reality of human ideology versus human instinct. There are many other examples that are more controversial and can be debated, such as the society of North Korea. The government of North Korea employees a very strict system of control over its citizens. On a more primitive level of the concept, an experiment was done with four Rhesus monkeys involving their interaction with an object when in different environments. The test involved both having the monkeys being isolated with an object and then being with another Rhesus monkeys with the object. The punishing act involved using blasts of air on the monkeys. Whenever an isolated monkey began manipulating the object, an air blast was used and the monkey would be punished. When a “naive” monkey was put in the same room as the punished monkey, the two monkeys’ interactions would be observed. The test was repeated to determine possible error. After the experimentation was done, the data showed that “the manipulation tendency of a subject was affected by the presence of a second subject.” This type of system is described in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, where physical punishment is what implements the ‘internalized gaze’ of control. Foucault's modification of the system involves something similar, but instead of using physical punishment as the catalyst into an “ordered” society, social pressures are used, described as the ‘internalized gaze. In conclusion, religion is an essential aspect of a political or economic system succeeding prosperity because there must be a human concept that controls the system rather than a human mind controlling the system it had created in order to have consistency within such a system. Human instinct leads to inconsistency within human ideology. Such human ideology must have a non-human, but humanely conceptualized, overseer in order for the system to succeed. This is implemented through the system of the Panopticon. Essentially, the guard is the “being” that is the overseer of the system and the “prisoners” are the people that hold such ideologies. Without a single-human influence upon the “being,” inconsistency from human instinct is eliminated from the system. Relation to Entities The Necessary Myth Hypothesis proposes that each conscious being is "controlled" by a standard in society in relation to ritual and religion, whether revolving around the metaphysical or not. This means there is a set relativity between sanity and insanity, sanity being what is perceived as normal. According to speculation, this means that there is a line drawn between the sane and insane part of the brain. This is the conflict between human consciousness, which is influenced majorly by the Panoptic society, and the human instinct, which is the natural organic embedded behaviors of humankind as a result of the evolutionary process. In this speculation, the conflict between the sanity and insanity with human consciousness is what "creates" these mythologies, lore, dreams, and nightmares that result in the common link of human dreams/nightmares with the "beings of the mind."